Renee Parsons
As Congress wrestles with the potential of the greatest financial calamity in American history about to occur, House RINO Republicans continue to deny reality as if numbers lie and can be easily manipulated to reflect their political ideology.
As an offshoot of the No Labels political party which was created in 2014 by former Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), the House of Representatives formed a Problem Solvers Caucus in 2017. The PSC describes itself as a member-sponsored caucus with Sixty evenly divided bipartisan Members who are “committed to finding common ground on many of the key issues facing the nation.”
Of the thirty Republican Members on the PSC, approximately a dozen are from Red states.
While the NL has claimed that “several of whom have been so conspicuously courageous, that No Labels has mobilized our entire national community to support them in their campaigns” there are no details as to who those PSC Members are or under what circumstances their courage was conspicuous.
While the NL’s role on the national political scene appears non-existent, its website which offers no mention of foreign policy says it is currently planning “to run a Unity ticket for president if the two major parties select candidates the vast majority of Americans don’t want to vote for in 2024”: all of which sounds like a RINO strategy or akin with the infamous Uniparty.
Although with no comparable Senate PSC, the NL group appears to have formed a Senate-House PSC alliance ensconced with a “bicameral meeting process” that is “conducted regularly via Zoom” and therefore ,have assumed a leadership role over the PSC, providing them with ‘guidance’ on policy issues such as the disagreements regarding the debt ceiling debate and especially how to meet the September 30th deadline and a potential government shutdown.
Meanwhile, the PSC has offered a complicated, bipartisan framework to avoid a government shutdown that continues federal funding levels as adopted in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, otherwise known as the Biden budget. Therefore, the PSC proposal falls way short of covering a 2024 deficit of $1.5 Trillion on top of an annual interest payment on the $33 Trillion national debt of $1.6 Trillion.
Most importantly, a review of US debt history reveals a not surprising correlation to US pursuit of war, as if a constant war strategy would benefit its national economy.
1900 $ 2.14 Billion
1909 $ 2.64 Billion
1919 $ 27.39 Billion WWI 1914-1918
1939 $777.62 Billion WWII 1939 – 1945
1949 $ 2.07 Trillion Korean War 1950 – 1953
1959 $ 2.05 Trillion
1979 $378.00 Billion Last non-Omnibus Congressional Budget
1984 $ 3.89 Trillion
1999 $ 8.72 Trillion Afghanistan War 2001 – 2021
2004 $ 10.04 Trillion Iraq War 2003 – 2014
2009 $ 14.27 Trillion
2014 $ 19.25 Trillion
2019 $ 22.84 Trillion
2022 – Ukraine War Added $118 Billion to Federal Debt
2023 $ 33,044,858,730,468.04 Trillion : Current Debt
Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found at reneedove3@yahoo.com.